Alicia gave a little nostalgic smile and laid the comic books aside. Wouldn’t it have been nice if Vince had simply called Hijitus?

Beneath the comic books, she found the videotapes, packed across the bottom of the box like spine-out books on a shelf. Alicia couldn’t recall ever having made a conscious decision to save them all these years, but she suspected that somewhere in her heart lay a plan to share them with her own children. She allowed herself to wonder for a moment if Vince would be the father, and it saddened her to think that he would never see any of this. She cleared her mind of such thoughts, however, as it had nothing to do with her mission. The important thing was that her old favorites were still there. She ran her finger lightly across the titles, searching for one of particular interest. She didn’t find it. She checked again, knowing that it had to be there.

It was gone.

She felt a slight chill, but her suspicions were not yet confirmed. Maybe she’d loaned it to a childhood friend and forgot about it. Maybe for some reason she’d decided not to save this one. Neither of those possibilities seemed likely, however. She guarded her collection like gold.

Her gaze swept the room and settled upon the PC that her parents had set up in the corner of the room. It was running, and the screen saver of bright blue sky and puffy white clouds beckoned. She went to it, clicked on the Internet browser, and typed a few pertinent words into the search engine. It came back with exactly what she needed. She opened the link and went straight to the Web site.

On screen, a pitch-black background transformed itself into impenetrable night sky with flashes of lightning and a blanket of twinkling stars. To one side, a dead, leafless tree shivered. The vacant eyes of two orange pumpkins flashed back and forth from white to black. A creepy old Victorian-style house soon took center stage, the doors and windows of irregular shapes, as if the whole structure were in danger of collapsing at any moment. A black bat fluttered in the wind, between the house and the old tree. And in bright orange letters, the title appeared against the black sky.

La Covacha de la Bruja Cachavacha.

Finally, in a high-pitched, scary voice that still gave Alicia the shivers, the witch-la bruja-said, “Bienvenidos a mi casa.”

Welcome to my house.

This witch was no Elizabeth Montgomery or Nicole Kidman. Her orange hair and pointy hat made her scary enough, and she was plenty ugly, with a big, long nose and missing teeth. For a cartoon character, particularly one created for children, she was unusually macabre. The thing that Alicia remembered most about her, and the very thing that had lured her back to her old bedroom, was the strange magic this witch possessed.

She had the power to make people disappear.

Alicia was still looking at the computer screen, this modern-day window to her childhood, but she was no longer really focused. She was thinking more about Falcon’s words-be sure to ask about the witch-and about his apparent obsession with “the disappeared.” She had yet to sort it out and think it through completely, but there was enough to make Alicia wonder.

How does that creep know anything about my childhood?

chapter 46

J ack needed some straight talk from Sergeant Paulo.

On paper, the line between good and evil seemed easy to draw in a hostage situation: hostage-taker, bad; hostage-negotiator, good. In Jack’s mind, however, the line was starting to blur. It wasn’t Paulo who was causing the confusion as much as the people around him, both on and off the scene. The mayor was sending mixed messages about his support for Paulo as lead negotiator. His bodyguard’s appearance at the river on the night of the murder remained unexplained. By nature, SWAT leaders were bursting with confidence, but Sergeant Chavez was becoming so arrogant that he seemed to have his own agenda. At times, even Alicia sent out confusing signals. For Jack, the interpersonal dynamic was starting to resemble a complicated trial in which he represented one of several co-defendants, where everyone professed to stand together at the outset, but where ultimate survival depended on covering your back in dagger-proof armor. Things were nowhere near that extreme-not yet, anyway-but Jack still found himself trying to figure out who could be trusted to act in the best interest of Theo and the other hostages.

He chose Sergeant Paulo.

Alicia was away when Jack returned to the mobile command center. Paulo was giving himself a quick shave with an electric razor. Another member of the crisis team was seated beside him, but he was more than willing to take a short break when Jack asked for a few minutes alone with Paulo. The door closed as the officer left the command center. Paulo switched off his razor, and the ball was in Jack’s court.

“I need to know the plan,” said Jack. “The whole plan.”

To Jack’s mild surprise, Paulo skipped the police doubletalk. “Falcon is going down,” he said.

“I’m sure that if it comes to that, no one will blame you.”

“It’s no longer just an option. You wanted to know the plan; that is the plan. They’ve made their decision.”

It was interesting that Paulo put it in terms of a decision they’ve made. “SWAT is going in?” said Jack.

“They want to try a sniper shot first.”

“How do they plan to set it up?”

“That’s my job-our job, actually, to the extent that you’ll be doing at least part of the talking.”

“What am I supposed to tell him? ‘Hey, Falcon, would you mind stepping closer to the window please? Good. Head up a little. That’s it. Now hold it.’”

“Ideally we’ll come up with a ruse to make him open the door and provide a clean shot. Drawing him to the window and somehow getting him to reveal himself is a possibility, but it’s not the preferred method. Even a trained marksman loses some degree of accuracy when shooting through a pane of glass.”

“What’s the difference? It’s clear glass, not a Coke bottle.”

“It can still affect the bullet’s trajectory, depending on distance and angles. And it’s been looking like rain all day. If it comes, that’s another issue. Even in clear weather, the safest assumption when shooting through a window is that the first shot will miss. But now that they have a green light, our snipers don’t need more than a split second to get off a second shot.”

Jack considered his response. He wanted this standoff to end as quickly as possible, but up until now he’d at least held out some hope that Falcon would put down his gun and surrender. Negotiating with the sole objective of putting a bullet in a man’s head changed the tenor of things. “When was this decision made?”

“I was just told about it five minutes ago.”

Something in Paulo’s voice conveyed that the question wasn’t being answered directly. “But when was it made?” said Jack.

“Sometime after we found out about the injured hostage, is what they tell me.”

Jack still sensed some equivocation. This was no time to let anything slide, even at the risk of offending. “Do you believe what they’re telling you?”

There was silence, and if Vince had been a sighted person, Jack sensed that they would have exchanged one of those long, ambiguous stares in which two equally cautious men size each other up and decide how much honesty their evolving relationship can handle. Strange, but Jack had the feeling that Paulo was doing exactly that, albeit on some level that didn’t depend on sight.

Paulo said, “I’m a suspicious man. It’s my nature.”

“So you have some questions in your mind.”

“Sure I do.”

“Do you ever wonder about the real objective here?” said Jack.

“I have only one objective, and that’s to get these folks out alive.”

“Does it matter to you if Falcon lives or dies?”